


Servus Sum

by honey_wheeler



Series: City of Illusions [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Gladiator AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 17:13:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6997414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After, he doesn’t ask if she’ll stay. He doesn’t want to present even the possibility that she could leave. Instead he merely kneels behind her and begins to dismantle the intricate architecture of her hair with the gentlest fingers he can manage.</p>
<p>“You mustn’t,” she says, her voice softened by the remnants of desire. But she makes no move to stop him. And so Jon pulls carefully at the braids and knots and twists of her hair, the strands like cool silk in his hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Servus Sum

He’d known she was staying from the moment she arrived. Jon has become well accustomed to the pattern of their days together. She comes only on the days he trains, never when he fights. On those days she finds him in the waning hours of daylight – after he’s trained, after she’s done whatever it is noble ladies do with their days – and says little as she removes her stola in a manner that could almost seem brisk but for her softness, for the warmth in her eyes when she looks at him. His Sansa is a lady, even in the most unladylike of situations.

This day she comes to him after he’s fought, when he’s in his quarters nursing his bruised and bloodied body, barely any light left in the sky. There is nothing even close to brisk in her manner. Rather she carries an air of desperation with her that hurts him more than any blade or foe could.

“Domina,” he says as he rises from his cot. Why he addresses her with such formality, he isn’t sure. Perhaps because she’s put him wrong-footed, as she has so many times since the moment he met her.

“Don’t,” she says. Begs, nearly. “Please.” Then she’s in his arms, holding his face between her hands and kissing him without thought for the dirt and blood, without thought for her clothing that she normally removes and folds so carefully before she comes to his bed.

He takes her sitting upon his lap, though to say he _takes_ her implies a degree of choice in the matter he did not have; she’d born him down to his cot with a strength that surprised him, her lips leaving his only to kiss his brow, his jaw, the spurs of his collarbones. She kisses each knuckle now, holding his hands so tightly that he’s unable to free them to wipe the tears that spill from her eyes. And she holds his head to her breast as he moves inside her, words spilling from her as easily as her tears had, sweet words of love that hold his heart the way she holds him within her body.

After, he doesn’t ask if she’ll stay. He doesn’t want to present even the possibility that she could leave. Instead he merely kneels behind her and begins to dismantle the intricate architecture of her hair with the gentlest fingers he can manage.

“You mustn’t,” she says, her voice softened by the remnants of desire. But she makes no move to stop him. And so Jon pulls carefully at the braids and knots and twists of her hair, the strands like cool silk in his hands.

He would not have expected to find such pleasure in this. His life is mostly blood and steel and sand. There is little soft in it, and even less sweet. But Sansa is only soft and sweet. No, she is steel as well, Jon thinks, but a different sort of steel. Her armor is on the inside.

“I cannot stay, Jon.” Her body belies her every word. She leans into him, her hips pressed to his knees, her head tipping languidly into his touch. “I’ll be expected. I must return.”

“Then return,” Jon answers, permitting himself a smile knowing she doesn’t see. So many braids and coils in her hair, such a strange pleasure to puzzle the structure of it out. His fingertips brush the nape of her neck and she shivers. He repeats the motion and a small, quavering sound escapes her lips.

“I shall. I must, you see. They’ll be…they’ll be expecting me.” Her tone has gone hazy now, as if she speaks from within a dream. Impulsively, Jon leans forward to brush the lightest of kisses over the delicate spur of bone at the base of her neck.

“So you said.”

It takes him the better part of an hour to dismantle her hair entirely. He could have accomplished it more quickly, but he’d lingered, counting each soft sigh and shiver as a triumph. When her hair is undone entirely, he spends long moments combing through it with his fingers, until it’s a shining cape over her shoulders.

“You are certainly the deadliest lady’s maid I’ve had.” 

Jon smiles. He thinks he would be drummed out of his barracks if it were known that he’d spent an hour with a woman in his bed simply undoing her hair. “I hope you’re as skilled at dressing a woman’s hair as you are at undressing it.”

“I would see it against your skin first,” Jon says, knowing that Sansa will go nowhere this night but maintaining the pretense. Sansa hesitates only a moment before removing the stola she still wears, wrinkled now and streaked with grime and blood. She’ll face questions tomorrow on where she was and what happened to her, on what caused her dishevelment. But tomorrow is not tonight.


End file.
